Do you know if your Instagram marketing strategy is working? Can you tell which post or story generated the most engagement over the course of a week? If you don’t have the answer to any of these questions, you need a healthy dose of Instagram analytics.
For those unfamiliar with their role, Instagram analytics help you assess the performance of your content and your profile overall. Savvy businesses utilize IG analytics to track a variety of metrics and evaluate the potential of their posts. By paying close attention to your analytics data, you can gain useful insights to help you improve your Instagram marketing.
But how do you get analytics on Instagram, especially since the platform doesn’t have its own analytics dashboard? Well, that’s exactly what we’re going to look at.
In this post, we’ll discuss the two main ways you can access analytics on Instagram, including the best tools to track Instagram metrics specific to your goals.
Let’s get started.
How to get Instagram analytics
You can track Instagram follower stats and other key metrics through:
- An Instagram business profile
- An Instagram analytics tool
If you’ve already created an Instagram profile for your business, you can see your analytics via the “Insights” tab in the Instagram app on your smartphone.
If you’re using the normal profile, you can easily convert it into a business one by following the steps outlined in our Instagram profile optimization guide.
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How to get account insights on Instagram
When viewing the main page of your Instagram profile, tap the “Insights action” button to open the Insights screen. Here, you can access a variety of actionable insights for your posts and audience demographics.
Note: If you’ve created or made the switch to an Instagram business profile fairly recently, it can take a while for the platform to present data for your account. Also, Instagram will only display insights for stories and content that you’ve posted after converting to a business profile.
The advantage of using Instagram Insights is that the data is pretty easy to comprehend. You don’t need to possess any previous data analytics experience, and you might even be able to draw out some valuable insights by tapping into the knowledge you already have.
But if you’re not keen on trying to cobble together data from the native analytics tool, consider using other Instagram analytics tools that offer advanced metrics and analysis capabilities.
The best Instagram analytics apps
Given the size of Instagram and the diversity of its metrics, it’s often best to have various types of analytics tools available at your disposal. Here, we’ll introduce the 12 best Instagram analytics apps out there to help you improve your overall performance.
1. Squarelovin
Squarelovin is one of the few tools that offer Instagram analytics free of charge. You can use it to get a monthly analysis of your recent posts and growth, or a history of your content broken down by hour, day, month, or year. The app also offers Instagram audience analytics, such as your followers’ preferences and interests.
You can even figure out the best hashtags and filters to use, depending on which posts are the most received by your followers.
Price: Free.
2. Crowdfire
Crowdfire’s stats offer a detailed view of how your Instagram business account has performed until a specific date. You can choose a range: 1 day, 7 days, 30 days, or 90 days. The alternative option is to pick a custom date range for a maximum of 90 days.
Additionally the platform allows you to choose any Instagram metrics you’d want to compare, including post views, follower growth, comments, profile views, and more.
Price: Free for viewing 1 day data, from $7.48/mo for 30 days data.
3. Later
Later is another Instagram analytics tool that will help you grow your business by improving your IG marketing strategy. What makes this platform unique is its link in bio feature that allows you to link your Instagram posts to specific URLs, such as product pages. You can then track website clicks, page views, and click-through rates from your Instagram profile and see how many sales a specific post generated.
Later offers a 14-day free trial that lets you access all its features, including Instagram hashtag analytics, link in bio metrics, Reel analytics, and more. Analytics are available for both Instagram business accounts and creator accounts.
Price: From $18 a month.
4. Minter.io
Another Instagram analytics tool you could use is Minter.io. It creates PDF reports that can give you insights on metrics such as follower growth, post and profile engagement rates, most popular photo filters, and more. You also get an option to export your data in a beautiful format that helps you keep other stakeholders in the loop about your Instagram marketing efforts.
Minter.io also offers a 14-day free trial that can be extended on request. This ensures you can try it for free to make sure it’s the right Instagram stats app for you.
Price: From $9 a month.
5. SmartMetrics
SmartMetrics gathers insights on an hourly basis to provide you with more than 30 Instagram metrics about your Stories, posts, and Instagram account. You can use it to track interactions with your followers, see hashtag engagement by the day, and even monitor the replies you get on your stories. In addition, the tool offers a way to monitor activity around your brand by tracking and replying to mentions on Instagram.
You can export Smartmetrics’s reports as CSV or PDF documents and share via email with a single click.
Price: From $9 a month.
6. Hootsuite
With its social listening and analytics tools, Hootsuite allows you to review your Instagram metrics quite extensively. You get the option to generate custom reports and compare historical data to analyze your overall performance. In addition, the platform enables you to easily share reports with different team members, straight from your Hootsuite dashboard.
Price: From $99 a month.
7. Iconosquare
Iconosquare is the ideal tool for agencies or brands that have multiple accounts on social media. It provides you with advanced insights to help you optimize your overall social media strategy. A few of its unique features include Instagram Stories analytics, engagement metrics, and hashtag and competitor tracking.
Its Community Analytics feature will also assist you in understanding insights such as the age, gender, and preferred language of Instagram users.
Price: From $64.30 a month.
8. Keyhole
Keyhole is one of the best social media analytics apps available for viewing the historical and real-time performance of your Instagram account. It lets you track hashtags, mentions, keywords, and URLs of your previous and existing posts. You’ll not only discover how many times a hashtag was used—the app also allows you to see trending hashtags and how your content is performing.
In addition, you can use Keyhole to track the basic analytics of competing Instagram profiles. You can track their activity, growth, and engagement data over a certain period. You can then use these data points to inform your own KPIs (key performance indicators).
Price: From $99 a month
9. Sprout Social
Sprout Sprout has everything you need to track, evaluate, and improve your Instagram marketing performance. You can use it to track trends in hashtag usage, content performance, and competitor and engagement data. Customizable reports allow you to choose a certain reporting period, while competitor analysis lets you keep tabs on Instagram trends and audience groups across a portfolio of competing brands.
Besides all of that, Sprout offers Instagram Story analytics to help you measure the long-term impact of your stories via clicks, replies, and other important KPIs.
Price: From $249 a month.
10. Whatagraph
If you’re looking for an easy-to-read Instagram Insights report to share with your team, virtual assistant, or social media manager, Whatagraph will come in handy.
The tool provides brilliant visualization of data with detailed reports that show the rate at which your followers are growing, identify top feed stories, and measure interaction and engagement generated by your Instagram content. Moreover, you can create a cross-channel social media performance report to compare performance across various channels.
There’s even an option to customize the report. Whatagraph lets you put your logo, apply your color scheme, and send the report from your own email ID.
Price: From $223 a month.
11. Rival IQ
Rival IQ is tailored to help you keep track of the most important Instagram metrics. You can use it to monitor Story taps forward and exit rates, when your audience is the most active online, profile link clicks, follower removes and adds, and so much more, for better performance. And with loads of demographic information (age group, gender ratio, and so on) at your fingertips, you can see what’s resonating well with your followers.
Moreover, the tool allows you to analyze preferred post types, hashtag performance, and best posting times to help create top content in your industry.
Price: From $199 a month.
12. HypeAuditor
If you’re looking for an in-depth analysis of the quality of an Instagram influencer’s followers or a way to find fake or ghost followers stats, HyperAuditor’s got you covered. It digs deep into influencer profiles to calculate their engagement rate (percentage of followers that engage with the influencer’s posts) and how it compares to the engagement rate of similar experts. You even get an AQS (audience quality score) that analyzes an influencer’s real worth on a scale of 1 to 100, with a score higher than 70 indicating that the influencer has good value.
Moreover, the platform can be used to check whether or not an influencer’s comments come from a loyal and engaged audience. Though it doesn’t offer native Instagram insights, you can use it to decide whether running an influencer campaign will be worth the investment.
Price: From $299 a month.
Start tracking Instagram analytics today
As you can see, there are several Instagram analytics tools available, catering to a variety of needs. Whether you wish to increase your engagement, grow your follower count, or discover the top trending hashtags for likes, using these platforms will help you achieve your goal. By monitoring and learning from the insights these tools provide, you’ll be able to see what’s working, what isn’t, and how to bridge the gaps.
Did we miss any important Instagram analytics app? Which Instagram analytics app do you prefer? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
